French troops pressed northward in Mali territory occupied by radical Islamists on Wednesday, launching a land assault which will put soldiers in direct combat "in 1 to 72 hours," military officials said.
A trickle of refugees left on foot from Diabaly, a town seized two days ago by the jihadists who have held onto it despite a punishing bombing campaign by French fighter jets. The refugees arrived in Niono town, 70 kilometers (43 miles south), according to residents.
French ground operations began overnight, France's military chief of staff Adm. Edouard Guillaud, said on Europe 1 television Wednesday. He stressed that French infantry units "will be fighting directly in coming hours, but I am unable to say whether it is in one hour or in 72 hours. ... Of course, we will be fighting directly."

I'm posting this for the sake of current events, and who knows what this may lead to. I remember reading about Al-Qaeda in Mali over the summer and how it turned the country upside down. While it is primarily Muslim, Islam in Mali is more laidback than Saudi Arabia for example. But when the Islamists came in, they began setting up a Taliban-like government in some areas. Before, a woman could walk down the street alone with no problem, but these days she can get beaten abd arrested. I also read in the NY Times that some of these radicals weren't Malian or from anywhere else in Africa, but from Pakistan.

I know we have mamacass who is from France, so she may be thinking about this. I know back in the day, we had a mod named sulawesigirl who did the Peace Corps in Mali. I know she is no longer here, but I'm wondering what she may be thinking about this.

Anyway, the world keeps turning and the extremists keep making more of a mess in the world.

An Algerian military operation ended a deadly hostage crisis at a gas plant Saturday, Algerian and Western officials said, after three days of chaos and confusion left dozens of casualties and sparked world fears of a new front of terror in Africa.
At least 23 hostages and 32 "terrorists" died in the Algerian hostage crisis, Algerian state news said Saturday, citing the military. At least 685 Algerian workers and 107 foreigners have been freed, those reports said.
A "final" assault to dislodge the militant hostage-takers killed seven hostages and 11 militants Saturday at the sprawling facility in eastern Algeria near Libya, Algerian state media reports said.
The Algerian military had to clear mines planted by militants, the official Algerian Press Service reported, citing the country's state-owned oil and gas company.
An Algerian Radio report did not specify the nationalities of those killed in the Algerian government's final push. CNN is unable to verify the state media figures on the deaths.
The militant siege, which began Wednesday, caught world attention as it dragged on for days.

Timbuktu, the fabled desert city where retreating Muslim extremists destroyed ancient manuscripts, was a center of Islamic learning hundreds of years before Columbus landed in the Americas.
It is not known how many of the priceless documents were destroyed by al Qaida-linked fighters who set ablaze a state-of-the-art library built with South African funding to conserve the brittle, camel-hide bound manuscripts from the harshness of the Sahara Desert climate and preserve them so researchers can study them.
News of the destruction came Monday from the mayor of Timbuktu. With its Islamic treasures and centuries-old mud-walled buildings including an iconic mosque, Timbuktu is a U.N.-designated World Heritage Site.
The damage caused by the fleeing Islamists was limited, but irreplaceable treasures were lost.
Most of the manuscripts, which are as many as 900 years old, were gathered between the 1980s and 2000 from all over Mali for the Ahmed Baba Institute for Higher Learning and Islamic Research, which moved into its new home in 2009.
The library held about 30,000 manuscripts of which only about one third had been catalogued, according to its Web site. The world may never know what it has lost.
The manuscripts cover subjects ranging from science, astrology and medicine to history, theology, grammar and geography. All are in Arabic script, in the Arabic language and African languages.
They date back to the late 12th century, the start of a 300-year golden age for Timbuktu as a spiritual and intellectual capital for the propagation of Islam on the continent.
Michael Covitt, chairman of the Malian Manuscript Foundation, called them "the most important find since the Dead Sea Scrolls."
Tens of thousands more manuscripts – no one knows how many – were kept at other libraries and private homes in Timbuktu. Some are believed to have been secreted against the Islamist fighters, who began their desecration of the city by systematically razing the 15th-century mausoleums of several Sufi saints in July. Among the tombs they destroyed is that of Sidi Mahmoudou, a saint who died in 955, according to a UNESCO website.